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SOS Website Development

Hello! We are Kyle & Thea and we were tasked with creating a system that tackles a current issue or popular topic. We chose the COVID-19 outbreak and the struggles surrounding social distancing as our main point of focus.

 

We designed an app called Surviving our Separation which dives into the positive and negative aspects of social distancing due to stay-at-home orders across the world. The app, when used to its fullest potential, can relay current news, provide a variety of therapeutic mediums, and supplies a plethora of games, workouts, and activities to engage the mind and body.

Context

Team

Roles

Website

COVID-19
Pandemic

Kyle Sproul
Thea Coelho

UX Design
User Research
Visual Design

01. Understanding the Users

Problem Statement

Due to the COVID 19 pandemic people have been forced to isolate, leaving them lonely and with a lot of free time. Their loneliness is caused by a lack of community, physical activity, social distancing and excessive time spent indoors.

Hypothesis

We believe that our app SOS (Surviving our Separation) will enhance pandemic users' home lives by providing accurate news and activities to do at home. This app will support those suffering by utilizing an empathic tone of the copy, an array of puzzles and workout options, and in particular, positive news articles and medically verified statistics informing them about the COVID19 pandemic.

Personas

01. Understanding the Audience

Painpoints

We prioritized our user’s main pain points based on our research and interviews. We selected the top two most pressing concerns and assigned them to each persona that fit the narrative.

  • Worried that he will lose muscle mass and his health may decline due to social distancing

  • Struggling to find an outlet to work out with other people.

  • Limited amount of free online help for easing stress and anxiety

  • Has constantly had to scour for news about COVID and pandemic updates

  • Struggling to make nutritionally balanced meals 

  • Trying not to get wrapped up in the politics of the pandemic and only read the news that routed in science

Scenarios of Use

In the process of prototyping, we sketched each scenario of use as a basis for our user flows. We then mapped out each persona and the specific pain points they experienced when going through their specific user flow.

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Welcome

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Our Problem

Due to the COVID 19 pandemic people have been forced to isolate, leaving them lonely and with a lot of free time. Their loneliness is caused by a lack of community, physical activity, social distancing and excessive time spent indoors.

Our Hypothesis

02. Outlining the Experience

We believe that our app SOS (Surviving our Separation) will enhance pandemic users' home lives by providing accurate news and activities to do at home. This app will support those suffering by utilizing an empathic tone of the copy, an array of puzzles and workout options, and in particular, positive news articles and medically verified statistics informing them about the COVID19 pandemic.

Research and Discovery

Because this project is a redesign, we sought to validate our original ideas and seek new ones. Through new market research, several analyses, and a deep dive into our original designs, we wanted to make sure SOS still had its place in a post-quarantine world.

SWOT Analysis

02. Outlining the Experience

Competitive Analysis

Because this project is a redesign, we sought to validate our original ideas and seek new ones. Through new market research, several analyses, and a deep dive into our original designs, we wanted to make sure SOS still had its place in a post-quarantine world.

A/B Analysis

Before stepping into how our new app needed to look and function, we re-ran some of our initial user tests on the previous design, making notes and comments on aspects that needed to be improved on. Through this, we discovered several key aspects and features we wanted to focus on moving forward.

Inspiration

After looking at websites that are similar to SOS, we wanted to go further and get inspired by websites that had a clear and well defined design system. We looked specifically for good layering techniques, vibrant illustrations, their understanding of color theory and how these websites incorporated them. We did this to ensure our website is unique and stands apart from our competing covid apps.

 

Style Guide

We developed our design system based on our inspiration and competitor analysis. We went with our specific color palette because it is versatile and each color combination works well together. We tried a couple of options for our typography such as Rubik and Fira Sans but ended up going with Inter because of its simplicity and straight edges.

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We found that using this typeface also made it easier to read our copy. For our illustrations, we wanted to try something new and with heavily defined outlines but with a mostly monochromatic look. We chose illustrations that could be intricate but easy to comprehend the visual message. We designed our color palette based on our illustrations which are predominantly shades of purple, then added a blue as an accent.

Color Palette, Icons & Typography

Logo Design

The SOS (Surviving Our Separation) logo features a heart with a home on the inside. Because of the growing trend of people working and doing more activities at home, we felt the logo was still fitting in a post-quarantine world.


03. Creating the System

Icons & Illustrations

Sketching

Below you can view some of our initial ideas and brainstorm of what we wanted our redesign of the ODIS website to look like.

Mid Fidelity Wireframes

03. Creating the System

Transitioning our rough sketches into wireframes in Figma, we looked hard at things like components, atomic design, spacing, layout, and more. Running through several iterations of each screen, we landed upon the final layouts that we felt suited our user base best.

Final Wireframes

Our final SOS app design presents a colorful, inviting, and user-friendly app that sees major improvements over our original design and experience. Introducing colorful cards, more navigation elements within our information architecture, and vibrant icons, we polished our original design in a modern way.

User Flows

Support Our Mission

Form

Homepage

Volunteer

Intake Form

Take a Survey

Welcome

Am I Eligible?

Create An Account

Homepage

Homepage

Why Trust ODIS?

Contact Us

04. The Future of ODIS

Edits for the Future

We hope to develop an iPad and web version of this app particularly to increase the functionality of the multiplayer game features. Ensuring the relevancy of the news feature could lend to some meaningful collaborations with news outlets in the future as the pandemic winds down and other current events take the spotlight. In response to user feedback, the addition of a cooler shade into the project’s color palette would communicate the appropriate mood and avoid a sense of visual congestion.

04. The Future of ODIS
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